The tuition for our university is less
than for schools costing twice as much. Why do you suppose
that is? I suspect it's because our university saves money
by paying low salaries to their philosophy instructors. Do
you have a better explanation?

Now then, let's slow down here. I hope
you did not read that first sentence and then conclude that
your tuition is relatively cheap. The first sentence was a
joke. The remark about low salaries was an intentional
'smokescreen' designed to get you to miss the joke in the
first sentence.

OK, let's get serious, and start with a
definition of critical thinking.

Definition of Critical Thinking:
Critical thinking is when you turn off your mind, relax, and
float downstream.

That's a pretty good definition, isn't
it?

Not!!!

To think critically is, among other
things, to be fair and open-minded while thinking carefully
about what to do or what to believe. If you are a critical
thinker, you will assess the reasons for and against doing
something and then make your decision on the basis of a fair
assessment, not on the basis of your emotions nor on what
your astrology column says nor on whether the person giving
you the reasons is looking you in the eye while sounding
sincere.

Someone claims you should buy their old
sofa. When faced with whether to accept this claim, the
critical thinker doesn't flip a coin to decide, but rather
weighs the pros and cons.

Thinking critically about a claim
involves interpreting it correctly, accepting or rejecting
it only for good reasons, and drawing reasonable conclusions
from it.

A critical thinker has an attitude--an
attitude of desiring to avoid nonsense, to find the truth
and to discover the best action. It's an attitude that
rejects "intuiting" the truth in favor of demanding reasons.
To be a critical thinker you need to be fair and open-minded
even with people you disagree with. You need to give them a
fair hearing because your goal is the truth or the best
action. Your goal isn't just to confirm what you already
believe.

Your adopting the attitude of the
critical thinker is essential if you are to avoid the
garbage on the path of life.

But a critical thinker is not a
hypercritical thinker. The point isn't to be so critical
that you find fault where there is no fault or that you make
mountains out of molehills by overstating small
problems.

Also, if you are a critical thinker, you
know how well you know. That is, you know how strongly you
should believe. For example, you know math, yes, but only
some math, not all math. Your knowledge might qualify you as
an expert on fifth grade math homework, but not on deciding
which articles to publish in a professional mathematics
journal. In other words, you have a sense of the limits and
qualifications on your knowledge.

Here are the specific
skills that a critical thinking
course should improve.

The following is a brief, but excellent,
definition of "critical thinking" from a bill in the
California State Senate that was trying to update the
State's Education code:

Critical thinking is the ability
to engage in reasoned discourse with intellectual
standards such as clarity, accuracy, precision, and
logic, and to use analytic skills with a fundamental
value orientation that emphasizes intellectual humility,
intellectual integrity, and fair-mindedness.